Before I begin, I'd like to note that no one should do this, ever.

I didn't do this experiment to have something to post here for tips. I did it first and foremost, to check out what good or bad effect it would have on me.

And boy did it have an effect!

Also, please don't use this trading plan as your personal trading plan. I designed it for the purpose of this experiment, and I will scrap it very soon.

Also, nothing in this post constitutes financial advice. (You may as well send a complete stranger your money if you wanted to take any of this as advice.)

So with all said and done, let's get in!

So first, I needed a trading plan.

If you're new to crypto trading, a trading plan is more or less a sequence of things that MUST happen in order for you to take a trade.

In other words, if all the stars don't align, you don't take the trade. Simple.

Trading plans are what is programmed into your automatic trading bots that helps them make their decisions.

Trading plans are set to eliminate that squishy, annoying thing called emotion from your trades, thereby leaving room for greater success(theoretically).

So I developed a simple trading plan using just 3 indicators.

• The Bollinger bands
• The RSI
• The MACD

I'm not going to detail the specifications I used in those indicators so no one runs out and actually uses this method, but I will tell you the criteria for my trades.

BUY IF

• The signal candle price is below the bottom Bollinger band.
• RSI is below 50, but has started approaching 50 from the bottom
• MACD is in the negative zone on it's histogram
• The faster moving average has crossed over the slower moving average from the bottom.

SELL IF

• The opposite of all that has happened

See? A really simple strategy!

Now, I needed a Testnet account to verify if it works.

I searched long and hard for a crypto exchange that actually had test net services, but to my surprise there weren't many free ones.

So I settled for Bybit. They offer 1 whole BTC in Testnet money, so that was a great start.

I obtained my 1 BTC after setting up my account, and I went ahead to trade using the plan.

Then I realised the problem.

The plan was way too strict.

See, a total of 4 things must happen PERFECTLY before I could make a trade.

This was bad for me because I'm a swing trader by nature. I love making multiple trades a day.

To cut a long story short, in 4 hours of just pure chart watching, I made only 3 trades.

These trades were correct to the teeth, because I had detailed entry and exit points, and the trading plan even had stop losses in place.

But I made only 3 trades in 4 hours!

I watched about 5 opportunities slip past me because of the trading plan I was using, and how it was so rigid.

To correct this, I will change a few things in the plan's architecture, and make it a little bit more flexible.

Then I will test that one and see how many trades I can make, and will create a new post for that.

But all in all, my total profits were about 0.02BTC, and my total losses were 0BTC.

So I kept about $200 profit from that trade!(Too bad it's fake money)

But the bottom line is that trading in the crypto requires more flexibility.

You can't wait for all your stars to align before making trades. You'll miss out on some serious dough.

Do you have any experience trading with a plan? Tell me in the comments!